Xander Mellish was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. She speaks very poor Spanish, mangled German, halting French, substandard Danish and Midwestern American English. Joel Fauré’s background music is Miles Davis’s “All Blues”.

Object(s) to bring back to life: “I can think of several, most of them public spaces. The Second Avenue Deli in New York City, for example, which had great matzoh ball soup and a Hall of Fame from the Yiddish theater circuit, which was once based on Second Avenue. Estee Lauder White Shoulders perfume, which my grandmother wore. (Not a very flexible product name in a multicultural society!) When I started buying it for her, it was on the second shelf of the perfume counter, but it went down the the third and ultimately the bottom shelf, as its devotees got older and older and finally all died off.”